Use Your Website to Help Your Competition And Your Competitors Will Help You Get Customers

When it comes to being a successful business owner, you may think that you need to undermine your competition at all costs. After all, these are the people who are tapping into the same customer pool as you – which means for every customer they acquire, you’re losing out on valuable dollars. You consider yourself constantly at war with your competition…

So why would you want to use your website to actually help your competition?

Rethink How You Look At Your Competitors

As it turns out, you should think of your competition as a valued ally more than an entity that needs to be defeated. You and your competition have more in common than you might think – and if you offer the same services in the same industry, you could benefit from them throwing little business your way.

To help illustrate this point, let’s say that you’re a roofing business that specializes in new residential roof installations and roof repairs. You’re in competition with another roofing business that specializes in roof repairs for commercial businesses. When a potential customer calls to indicate that he or she needs an residential roof repaired, they can direct this customer to you, rather than going through the expense and effort of training their staff in this new specialty.

Become An Asset To Your Competitor

Think about it this way: if you have a potential customer call to inquire about a service or product that you don’t offer, it’s much more cost-effective to send the customer to your competition rather than invest a significant amount of time and money into this one job. Training in specialties should be done on your own time, not in the hopes of getting a single job from one customer. Your competitors are likely to see this the same way. As a result, businesses forward specialized leads everyday.

That’s why business leaders should:

Post All Services – Post specialties and services on your website so that companies can have a quick reference of all of your services.

Show Pictures – Give clear picture of what you do best. A photo gallery or before & after photos are great ways to demonstrate your expertise.

Write Blog Articles About Your Specialty –Write articles about your specialties describing what, why, when, and if you can how you do what you do. Answer common questions your customers ask you about your service, and if you can provide examples and demonstrations.

Be Visible When They Search Online – Make sure that search engines give high you visibility for all your specialized services. This is effective with local search engine optimization or with pay per click. The key here is to be visible when they need you right away.

Create A Working Relationship

You may even want to send a friendly note to your competitor to let them know that you’re happy to send any business their way should you get a customer who is inquiring about a specialty you don’t offer. The goal is to get your competition to agree to do the same for you in return – and that’s where you really start making money.

So whether you work out a commission agreement with your competition or you agree to send customers to one another, don’t miss out on this valuable opportunity.

Give Competitors A Reason To Link To You

There is one more reason why it is vitally important to describe your services, show a portfolio, write blog posts, and give before & after photos on your website. There are companies like yours all of the world and it may suit their business needs to display your blog article, a photo from your gallery or even a demonstration to their website visitors. In order to share anything from your website, they would also need to provide a link back to your website as the source they used for the item. For example, you are an electrician in Atlanta that writes an article on your website about “How To Install A Flat Screen TV With Hidden Wires?”. A electrician in New York loves the article so he decides to add this post to his website. Once he has added the article, he would also need to add a link back to the original source of the blog post(Your website). The more links you get to your website from companies like yours, the better visibility other posts from your website will receive from search engines. This is because your website will be seen as a trusted source in your industry.